> Both companies had arrived at a similar view of the future where AI will redefine every business application and workflow — and reinvent productivity as we know it today into a place where humans and AI work together everywhere you get work done. We want to rethink a suite of tools and come together to provide users and teams with their own AI productivity platform for apps and agents.
> We discussed each of our paths to achieving this vision, and while both teams felt confident in their paths, it was obvious that we would move much faster together. The way that each of us has approached this market is different but inherently complementary. And so the conversation became... “What if we merged the companies?”
> Over the next few days, through discussions with Grammarly CEO (Rahul Roy-Chowdhury) and the co-founders (Max Lytvyn and Alex Shevchenko) we started sketching out what a combined company would feel like: how the teams would fit together, where the products could immediately integrate and amplify, etc. And we also discussed the leadership structure, and agreed that I would lead the joint company as CEO.
> With a round of sushi and some sake, we shook hands — excited to work together on the future of AI.
—
The idea that any acquisition, but especially this one, was minted in this fashion is hilarious.
Especially "acquistion" - he continually presents both sides as peers, collaborating - even mentions "merging: - but this never happens. Maybe the Coda people will eventually, someday emerge as the leaders, but this would be incredibly atypical. Even when two equal size companies merge someone is being acquired. Majority of Coda leadership will be gone in 6-12 months.
>> zuck pinged me to say "i'm not sure if this is a good idea yet, but i think maybe facebook should buy instagram, what do you think?" [0]
The next conversations also read as if they were happening over lunch, albeit with lawyers whispering approved language into each participant's ear [1]
As long as we live in a society of humans, there will be humans controlling millions of dollars, billions, trillions, and then yes, -illion dollar conversations do happen, sometimes randomly even. That's one of the purposes of all the country clubs, yacht clubs, galas, etc.
Business people spend their entire day talking about their business, that's literally their job. Sometimes business opportunities come from random discussions. Sometimes they are more like arranged marriages. And just like with marriages, the story that is told to the public might not be the actual story.
Grammarly has been having an identity crisis ever since LLMs made grammar checking accessible to every company at a fraction of the cost. ChatGPT is killing a lot of companies and grammarly was the first collateral.
This acquisition is concerning because Grammarly is well known for its bad privacy policy and how it's essentially a keylogger. Now that it has access to probably thousands of companies data hosted on Coda is a huge concern.
But it's high time Grammarly evolves itself into some other product or die trying.
The other day, Grammarly marked a grammar error in my text. I wasn’t too sure about it, so I asked ChatGPT (4o) to explain it. It agreed with Grammarly. I wasn’t convinced and didn’t understand ChatGPTs justification, so I asked again but using the more advanced o1 model… this time ChatGPT said Grammarly was wrong.
… ChatGPT is good at improving grammar, but it doesn’t “understand” what it’s doing (by design), and doesn’t have a complete and consistent ruleset, which is what you want in a grammar checker. Also, grammar and style rules change with time, and you want to have good and precise control of what rules you’re applying.
I am perplexed by Grammarly getting progressively worse as time goes by. I am seriously considering spending a weekend or two on writing myself a small LLM powered clone. I think a browser extension for Gmail should be relatively easy. I am not sure about Word (desktop) and Google Docs though.
However, it is more expensive than Grammarly's annual plan and there is no Office app. I do like the different models, though, and it looks very polished.
Have you considered letting users add their own "writing tones"? I have a few Custom GPTs for different types of recipients. Perhaps your users would like such a feature.
> Have you considered letting users add their own "writing tones"?
Even better, I recently implemented the Prompt Template feature. You can create as many prompt templates as you like and insert them with one click. It's a recent feature, so the landing page is not updated, but you can try it for free (without adding a credit card) at https://chatgptwriter.ai/extension.
Is Grammarly anything more than glorified autocorrect?
Curious if anyone here uses it, and if so, what value it provides (I've been bombarded with its ads for years, but could never see what value it provides). Even a quick search of its website gives inanely basic examples (like correcting Ive to I've) [1].
Having English as a second language, it was essential for me for a long time. I never understood why they never marketed to that public.
I don’t pay for it anymore because I am more comfortable in my current company where I am sure my colleagues won’t be bothered by frequent mistakes and misspellings. Also, for the eventual more important text that I want to be grammatically perfect, there is free ChatGPT now.
I myself do not, but some people I know who are intelligent and articulate and also dyslexic struggle to get their thoughts expressed in writing adequately for professional life, especially in the “everyone live co-editing” environment these days. Many of them report Grammarly being a valuable tool for them to feel like they’re on a more even playing field.
So yes, fancy autocorrect, but apparently better enough to matter for them.
My CTO uses it, which is frankly, terrifying. We'll be in a shared screen session editing slides for a board meeting or very sensitive docs, and their little UI prompts are shining away.
...and it's not like it improves his grammar or spelling - they're still terrible!
We had fewer distractions, though, even if we didn't have all the world's information so close at hand. I think I'd pick that struggle again over what today's students go through. But I'm glad to have lived in both eras.
I'm not that old, and I still remember being really disappointed when something wasn't in my home (book) Encyclopedia. Then you would trudge to the library to find maybe one book on the obscure topic.
You could request a book be sent from another library, but that would take weeks, and you had no idea what was in that book.
It was wild. Most things were just unknown, or whatever you parents told you.
I graduated in the mid 2000s, and right around that time they moved the main library collection into a mechanical bin that you have to request an attendant to request books for you.
I have fond memories of looking up X, and going to the library and exploring the section where X was stored, along with all the books around it. this experience is dead now with their new "system". It's been about 20 years and I'm an old dog now with limited energy. but I would love to (if I were a political activist) do an expose story about how many books were checked out before this transfer was made vs after. I strongly suspect that a lot of knowledge was lost, just due to the friction of having to know which exact book you want, vs having the liberty to browse and freely select whatever you stumbled upon. and not all the info is online, now. due to licensing and copyright. Google Books tried to fight that, but lost. It's sad.
I loved going through our (small) programming & computers section in our school library in the early 2000s, and visiting the local library with a much larger one. I picked up PHP because of that :)
>his acquisition is concerning because Grammarly is well known for its bad privacy policy and how it's essentially a keylogger. Now that it has access to probably thousands of companies data hosted on Coda is a huge concern.
The post is quite strange, though. It exaggerates the deal in a very artificial way. For example, "My wife asked me how to think about this — is it a beginning, an end, something in between? I told her that it felt like a clear chapter mark: the end of chapter one. A fantastic opening act behind us, but with many chapters to be written in front of us.".
I have some experience in writing, reading, and editing. While there isn't a single, definitive writing style, it's common to use positive, concise corporate-speak in specific places. However, this piece employs it repeatedly, as seen in phrases like:
- "Together, we will build the AI-native suite of the future"
- "This represents an opportunity for dramatic acceleration of the Coda product and our mission"
- "We plan to weave the best of Coda and Grammarly together. It will combine your company knowledge, generative AI chat features, a full productivity suite, and hundreds of agents to help you work smarter"
- "We aim to redefine productivity for the AI era"
> While there isn't a single, definitive writing style, it's common to use positive, concise corporate-speak in specific places.
In my observation, this is much more common in the USA. In other countries, when using English, this is already less emphasized, and when some other language is used, the writing style becomes even less "exalted".
In the PR, they use some of the ambiguity around the term AI to claim it's AI native. It isn't LLM native, but they indeed were using things that encompass AI.
If anyone else thought of Panic, here's what happened with that Coda: https://panic.com/coda/
That's very disingenuous. Nova replaces Coda "Buy Nova, own it forever [...] $99 + tax includes one full year of updates and new features" Not getting updates forever != subscription
Right. It's closer to Jetbrains' model for their IDE, although arguably better. IIRC if you stop paying Jetbrains an annual license, the license "falls back" to the version the IDE was at when the license started 12 months ago; if you stop paying Panic, the Nova license remains good for the major version of Nova you have when the license ended. (e.g., if you bought a license when Nova 10.0 was current and the license "expired" when Nova 11.1 was the current version, you don't have to go back to Nova 10; you can keep using Nova 11 and keep getting updates until Nova 12 is released.)
A bit surprised OpenAI didn’t acquire coda. Solid leadership team and the product would be a nice complement to OAI’s current portfolio. Lots of AI usage will seamlessly live in productivity tools which means OAI is disintermediated at point of use by its biggest rival Google (workspace) or its frenemy MSFT (office). Coda’s tools seemed well built and available for a fraction of the cost of buying eg Notion.
From what I can tell, Grammarly bought coda for 150M and a ceo position forced by the VC’s.. it was their only option. Yes I agree they are under the same VC’s. Grammarly has a leadership problem, and coda has a money problem. shishir has a huge influence in Silicon Valley due to his YouTube days. So yes, two companies struggling to survive. One has reputable leader living off his past success (not current) and one company with money but no leadership. It’s a lifeline for both and last chance to show they can be successful. I guarantee shishir has two years to prove he can be a leader or he is out of the game. It was way to save egos and hopefully make a good company.
Whatever the VC definition of a leader is, I was incredibly impressed with Shishir Mehrotra. His company and their practices are very mature and well run for their size and stage. I seriously considered joining Coda a year ago solely because of him. I hope he can find success with this new venture.
I wish mergers were not possible. I feel like the merger/acquisition thing has gone way to far to make behemonth corporations that help no one but the rich.
Anecdotes are not data, and we are (most definitely) not a behemoth, but here is my experience.
A) we acquired a small (2 person) company for the people. Basically paid of their debt and they became employees. They gad experience in our domain space.
B) we acquired our distributer. We make product (hardware and software) and our (exclusive national) distributer went onto the market. We made an offer. We subsumed twice as many staff, and three times the offices.
Fast forward a decade later and the (combined) business has grown a lot, customers are better served, and there is more continuity from "farm to table".
So, from my perspective, your proposal to ban acquisitions seems to be painting with a very broad brush.
Equally, at the macro scale, there are regulatory controls in place. The recent denial of the T-mobile merger being a case in point.
I have heard, albeit third hand or so, that M&A people (lawyers, investment bankers, and probably a fair percentage of C-suite execs) are fairly cynical about most mergers: synergies are often overstated and take years to materialize if they ever do. But those sweet M&A fees and that sweet M&A bonus money is definitely real.
> We discussed each of our paths to achieving this vision, and while both teams felt confident in their paths, it was obvious that we would move much faster together. The way that each of us has approached this market is different but inherently complementary. And so the conversation became... “What if we merged the companies?”
> Over the next few days, through discussions with Grammarly CEO (Rahul Roy-Chowdhury) and the co-founders (Max Lytvyn and Alex Shevchenko) we started sketching out what a combined company would feel like: how the teams would fit together, where the products could immediately integrate and amplify, etc. And we also discussed the leadership structure, and agreed that I would lead the joint company as CEO.
> With a round of sushi and some sake, we shook hands — excited to work together on the future of AI.
—
The idea that any acquisition, but especially this one, was minted in this fashion is hilarious.
Well, in this case, the new CEO of the combined company is from Coda, so perhaps a little less likely than otherwise...
>> zuck pinged me to say "i'm not sure if this is a good idea yet, but i think maybe facebook should buy instagram, what do you think?" [0]
The next conversations also read as if they were happening over lunch, albeit with lawyers whispering approved language into each participant's ear [1]
[0] https://www.techemails.com/p/instagram-cofounder-on-mark-zuc...
[1] https://www.threads.net/@techemails/post/C_od8rsvuiO
Business people spend their entire day talking about their business, that's literally their job. Sometimes business opportunities come from random discussions. Sometimes they are more like arranged marriages. And just like with marriages, the story that is told to the public might not be the actual story.
This acquisition is concerning because Grammarly is well known for its bad privacy policy and how it's essentially a keylogger. Now that it has access to probably thousands of companies data hosted on Coda is a huge concern.
But it's high time Grammarly evolves itself into some other product or die trying.
… ChatGPT is good at improving grammar, but it doesn’t “understand” what it’s doing (by design), and doesn’t have a complete and consistent ruleset, which is what you want in a grammar checker. Also, grammar and style rules change with time, and you want to have good and precise control of what rules you’re applying.
Hold your beer, I built that https://chatgptwriter.ai
However, it is more expensive than Grammarly's annual plan and there is no Office app. I do like the different models, though, and it looks very polished.
Have you considered letting users add their own "writing tones"? I have a few Custom GPTs for different types of recipients. Perhaps your users would like such a feature.
Even better, I recently implemented the Prompt Template feature. You can create as many prompt templates as you like and insert them with one click. It's a recent feature, so the landing page is not updated, but you can try it for free (without adding a credit card) at https://chatgptwriter.ai/extension.
Leadership issue.
Curious if anyone here uses it, and if so, what value it provides (I've been bombarded with its ads for years, but could never see what value it provides). Even a quick search of its website gives inanely basic examples (like correcting Ive to I've) [1].
[1] https://support.grammarly.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047727871...
I don’t pay for it anymore because I am more comfortable in my current company where I am sure my colleagues won’t be bothered by frequent mistakes and misspellings. Also, for the eventual more important text that I want to be grammatically perfect, there is free ChatGPT now.
So yes, fancy autocorrect, but apparently better enough to matter for them.
...and it's not like it improves his grammar or spelling - they're still terrible!
Then again, I can't imagine the struggle of having to rely entirely on libraries pre-internet
You could request a book be sent from another library, but that would take weeks, and you had no idea what was in that book.
It was wild. Most things were just unknown, or whatever you parents told you.
I have fond memories of looking up X, and going to the library and exploring the section where X was stored, along with all the books around it. this experience is dead now with their new "system". It's been about 20 years and I'm an old dog now with limited energy. but I would love to (if I were a political activist) do an expose story about how many books were checked out before this transfer was made vs after. I strongly suspect that a lot of knowledge was lost, just due to the friction of having to know which exact book you want, vs having the liberty to browse and freely select whatever you stumbled upon. and not all the info is online, now. due to licensing and copyright. Google Books tried to fight that, but lost. It's sad.
And how does ChatGPT differ?
- "Together, we will build the AI-native suite of the future"
- "This represents an opportunity for dramatic acceleration of the Coda product and our mission"
- "We plan to weave the best of Coda and Grammarly together. It will combine your company knowledge, generative AI chat features, a full productivity suite, and hundreds of agents to help you work smarter"
- "We aim to redefine productivity for the AI era"
In my observation, this is much more common in the USA. In other countries, when using English, this is already less emphasized, and when some other language is used, the writing style becomes even less "exalted".
If anyone else thought of Panic, here's what happened with that Coda: https://panic.com/coda/
Pretty interesting twist. It’s almost as if Coda acquired Grammarly.
A) we acquired a small (2 person) company for the people. Basically paid of their debt and they became employees. They gad experience in our domain space.
B) we acquired our distributer. We make product (hardware and software) and our (exclusive national) distributer went onto the market. We made an offer. We subsumed twice as many staff, and three times the offices.
Fast forward a decade later and the (combined) business has grown a lot, customers are better served, and there is more continuity from "farm to table".
So, from my perspective, your proposal to ban acquisitions seems to be painting with a very broad brush.
Equally, at the macro scale, there are regulatory controls in place. The recent denial of the T-mobile merger being a case in point.
Just going through one right now; can't tell if the sickly sweet, positive executive speak is an act or they honestly believe it.
What's the difference?
For Coda this makes sense to kind of kickstart/boost their AI efforts.
But not immediately clear to me why Grammarly is interested in building their own doc builder tool?